


history repeats itself in phrases, scribbled in dark places

by kadaransmuggler



Series: the dawn will come [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alistair leaves the party, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 06:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7607113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadaransmuggler/pseuds/kadaransmuggler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neria Surana twists her hands around the soft material of her cloak, and does her best to hold herself together long enough not to break and shatter in front of the Landsmeet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	history repeats itself in phrases, scribbled in dark places

"I thought we were friends," Alistair snarls, and Neria flinches as if she'd been struck, hearing others say the same thing in the same tone and she wonders how she ever thought anyone would stay with her until the end, bitter though it may be.

"I'm trying to do what's best for Ferelden! We're fighting to save it!" she protests, but her voice is weak and there is a sharp, hollow thing settling into the pit of her stomach. Neria Surana fists her hands in the soft material of her cloak, and tries to hold herself together, lest she break and shatter in front of the Landsmeet.

"I will not stand beside him. Neither should you," Alistair says, and he is adamant in this. Neria feels a wave of helplessness wash over her, and her grip on the cloth of her cloak tightens. She takes a deep breath.

"I'm sorry, Alistair," she whispers, and she wonders how she made such a dreadful mess of it all. She looks down at her hands, still fisted in the fabric, and for a moment they are bright red and stained with blood before her vision clears and she sees instead the pale white clenched in the deep blue. She wonders how she made such a mess of it all. A dreadful weariness settles over her, slinking along her bones and resting across her shoulders. There has been too much death for her to kill Loghain, not when the Joining itself might.

"I guess I have no choice, then. I'm leaving," he says, and something in Neria's heart twists in her.

"I'm afraid it's not so simple as that, Alistair," Anora says, and Neria's heart is hammering in her chest hard enough she wonders how her ribs aren't breaking. She knows what is coming, knows it as surely as the ocean beats against the shore.

"You already got what you wanted. You're queen, and your murdering father gets a place in the Grey Wardens," Alistair hisses, but there is a shift in his posture and she realizes that he knows, too, just like she does. Neria looks over at Zevran, the helplessness sharp and overwhelming. She takes a ragged breath, and anything she could say dies in her throat.

"Your life. So long as you live, rebellions can be raised in your name. Our land cannot endure another civil war. I must call for your execution," Anora answers, perfectly calm, perfectly composed, like she hasn't just ordered the man she was going to marry executed. Neria wonders how she does this.

Neria steps forward in horror, just managing to keep from grabbing Anora's arm in desperation. Her fingernails sink into her palm hard enough to draw blood. "No. You owe me for this, Anora. Let him go," she says, and she could not stop the Circle or the Chantry but she can do this, she can stop Anora. She has to.

"This is what you would ask?" Anora says, incredulous. Neria straightens, forces herself uncurl her fingers, forces herself to look just as calm and composed despite the screaming in her head and the sharp ache of loss that she is already feeling.

"It is," Neria says, her voice steady and sure. It is all she can ask anyway.

"Very well, although it is most certainly a mistake. Alistair, you may leave, on the condition that you swear before this Landsmeet that you renounce all claim to the throne for yourself and any of your heirs," she says, and she is every bit the regal queen that Ferelden so desperately needs. Neria wonders if she should hate herself for thinking still that this was the right choice, that she should be acting in the interests of Ferelden and not anything so selfish as a desire for revenge. 

"That's what it'll take, huh? Fine. I don't want anything to do with this place, or any of you ever again. I swear that I renounce all claim to the throne," he says, and there is something hard and defiant in his voice. Neria wants to reach out to him, like she'd been doing since the start of all this. She does not.

He turns to her, and she flinches again. "Time for me to go. Good luck. You'll need it if he survives the Joining," Alistair says, instead of whatever awful thing Neria might have imagined. She thinks, perhaps, that he would not have made so terrible a king after all. 

"You don't have to leave, Alistair," she says, softly, and she almost hates herself for letting it slip out. There is a bitter twist to Alistair's lips, and she despises how open she knows her face is, despises how easy it is to read the desperation written there.

"I do, actually. You heard Anora- either I get out, or I get to join Duncan. Nice, yeah? Have fun ending the Blight, or whatever. You made your decision. So, goodbye," he says, and when he turns to go, Neria has to stop herself from following him. She twists her hands in her cloak and draws it tightly around her, to hide the way her hands shake.

She stands like a statue through the speech Anora gives, and through Loghain's Joining. He lives, which is a miracle in and of itself, but the first moment she is not needed, Neria flees, like she has always done.

* * *

 

She finds herself on the roof of the palace. It is not until she hears the light, almost-not-there sound of Zevran's footsteps and feels the warmth of his body slide in beside hers that she realizes she is crying. A sob tears it's way out of her throat then, and she curls closer, towards him, starving for affection and desperate for comfort, for anything other than this horrible gaping hole in her chest. They sit in silence, until she is the one who breaks it.

"I have a daughter," she says, and the words sound broken as they claw their way out of her throat. She does not know why she is thinking of that now, when she should be mourning Alistair's friendship. It is all crashing down upon her now, everything that has happened, everything that she has lost, and she feels so horribly lost and selfish throughout the whole thing.

"Oh?" Zevran says, tilting his head to look down at her. She is too tired to look up, the weight of it all pressing down upon her. She curls even further in on herself.

"I had her two years ago. The senior enchanters offered me a way to...to take care of it, before she was born. I...I refused. She was my daughter. I held her once before the templars took her. I named her Lorelei. I don't know if they let her keep it," she says, and something in her shatters all over again at the loss, somehow fresh against everything else that has happened. She wonders how much longer this wound will bleed, or if it will ever stop.

"We can have children of our own, if you want. Or we could find her," he says, and Neria shakes her head violently. Her daughter was in a Chantry, right now, and there was nothing she could do to help her or change that and she knows that it is a good thing that her daughter looked more human than elven, because pointed ears were akin to a death sentence just like the magic Neria could feel sparking along her veins even now. 

"There'll be no finding her. And now...with the Taint," she says, and then trails off, taking a deep shuddering breath that scrapes her throat on the way out. She shifts, suddenly, sitting up and scrubbing at her face with her hands.

"I've made a mess of everything," Neria whispers. She feels Zevran's arms wrap around her, slowly, hesitantly, drawing her back against the steady warmth of his chest. She cannot bear to look at him. 

"No, _mi amore_ , you haven't. In fact, you've done remarkably well," he says, his voice softer and gentler than anyone had ever been to her before, and Neria wants to laugh, wants to tell him how half of her decisions were based on him, based on their friends, wants to tell him that leading an army isn't a task that should be given to her, a child fresh out of the Circle with no idea how the world worked, only that she was free, finally, of that dreadful and cursed place that she had lost everything to. In the end, she is only eighteen, younger even than Alistair, who insisted on following her until the moment she made a choice that he didn't like and she wonders why she thought it might have been a good one, when it cost her her best friend. 

She thinks about how, when she took her first steps onto the shore, the Circle Tower in the horizon, she cried on Duncan, her fingers curling into the buckles on his armor as he held her, rocking her gently and assuring her that everything would be all right, when, of course it was, there was grass tickling her feet and sunshine beating down on her and still she cried for everything she'd lost in that cursed place.

She thinks about Jowan, a lost and lonely soul given back to the Circle despite her pleas to free him, to let him wander free and atone for his sins as his conscience demanded. She thinks about the Urn of Sacred Ashes, and how he appeared to her then. She wonders what he would think of her now. She wonders if they've made him Tranquil yet.

"Let's go back inside," she says, instead, and Zevran helps her stand, keeps his arms around her as she drifts through the palace. She feels like a frail and broken thing. 

"Alistair will understand in time, my love," Zevran says, eventually, and Neria shrugs.

"He might," she says, and she does not mention how nothing will change, how she will have betrayed him either way or how maybe it was he who betrayed her. Instead, she undresses and crawls into bed, her fingers curling in the sheets. The past would always cling to her, sitting just under her skin and wrapped around her bones. Perhaps Alistair would realize, in the end, that she never betrayed him, that she always wanted the best for him, that he was family to her and she hoped desperately she'd been family to him. Perhaps he wouldn't. She could only look forward, now, to what may come.

**Author's Note:**

> I picked up a Surana playthrough after forever and played through the Landsmeet today. It was only after I'd already said I'd spare Loghain that I realized I hadn't hardened Alistair- so I got yelled at as I backed Anora and Alistair left. I thought about it for awhile afterwards, especially about Neria and how she'd feel, so I churned this out. Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
